Friday, March 26, 2010

GMapCatcher is a program that lets you view maps from a variety of different sources from the desktop. The program can also download maps to the local hard drive allowing one to view these even when offline.

Currently the following map providers are supported:

CloudMade

OpenStreetMap

Google Maps

Yahoo

InformationFreeway

OpenCycleMap

Google Map Maker

Virtual Earth

GMapCatcher offers a much better experience in viewing maps and navigating around, a lot better than using it through a browser. You can zoom in and out of the map using the mouse scroll wheel or by using a slider, add markers, search for places, edit locations and so on. GMapCatcher also supports keyboard shortcuts for even easier navigation.

Downloading maps for offline usage requires no extra effort. Just check the box labeled “Offline” and it will automatically save the maps as you browse them. Once the maps are downloaded, it will reside on user's hard disk and can be browsed again without going online.

You can also batch download maps by specifying the center latitude and longitude and area of the map to download in kilometers. You can even download them at multiple zoom levels.

GMapCatcher is written in Python and can run on Linux, Windows and Mac OSX.